1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an inkjet recording apparatus and an inkjet recording method for recording images with an inkjet recording head.
2. Description of the Related Art
In inkjet recording apparatuses that perform recording on a recording medium by discharging ink from nozzles arrayed in a recording head, multipass recording is widely used in order to improve the recording image quality. Multipass recording is performed by alternately repeating a recording scanning operation and a conveying operation. A carriage having a recording head reciprocates for recording in the recording scanning operation, and a recording medium is conveyed by a predetermined amount in a direction orthogonal to the reciprocating direction of the carriage in the conveying operation. In multipass recording, unit regions (bands) of an image are sequentially recorded on the recording medium by alternately repeating the recording scanning operation and the conveyance operation. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 55-113573 discloses a two-way recording method in which recording is performed by both forward and backward scanning motions of a recording head.
Unfortunately, when two-way recording is performed by the conventional multipass recording method, band-like recorded unevenness may occur. Band-like recorded unevenness is caused when the glossiness and tone of color differ among the unit regions because the order in which inks are printed differs among the unit regions.
This problem may be more apparent particularly when recording is performed with pigment inks, since pigment ink printed later may cover pigment ink printed previously, that is, the later recorded pigment ink may remain more easily on a surface of the recording medium than the previously recorded pigment ink. Therefore, the glossiness and tone of color of the later printed pigment ink tend to be dominant. That is, in two-way recording with pigment inks, the order in which the pigment inks are printed in the last pass differs among the unit regions, and consequently, band-like recorded unevenness sometimes appears markedly.